Thanks Marlou and Lauren.
Days crept along, they always did. There was some perverse humor in that; even though she wanted it all to end, the seconds, the minutes, hours, days kept coming.
It never got easier, but she wanted it to be easier. Even after two days her brain was screwed around him, so very intent on figuring him out, annihilating her early plan. She couldn't forget him, that was just stupid. That was fickle and insane. But... that didn't make her pathetic, it just made her really... in love.
Really in love. Really, really in love. Really-she had to stop thinking about it all. She had to stop thinking and just go to sleep. Her head tossed on the pillow, the left side of her cheek plastered to the cool blue cotton, eyes blinking in the low mid-afternoon sun.
There were times she wished that she slept during the night; if she slept then, she could wrap herself in darkness, something to accompany the slight misery gnawing at her. There were men, so many men that she could get lost in; men that she could find the presence of mind to try and love, but it would never happen.
Again, she flipped over, the right side of her face against the pillow. She just needed to know... needed to feel... needed, needed...
Perhaps he was unable to give.
Then again, he had asked her to show him how to love her. But... why didn't he know? Wasn't that simply human? To know how to love, wasn't that human?
At the end of shift Saturday morning, after two days of nothing, he invited her to lunch, not bothering to glance up from his paperwork. Sara stood in the doorway, watching him move his pen over the paper, waiting for him to say something else. When he didn't get a response from her, he glanced up. "So, no?"
"I uh, yeah, lunch is fine, just let me go home and change," she said in response.
Grissom nodded, head going back down over the paperwork. "I'll pick you up in an hour or so," his voice lingering over the last word, knowing that he'd confused her once more. "Okay?"
Sara simply nodded and left the lab, dragging her feet.
True to his word, an hour and five minutes later, Grissom pulled up in front of her apartment building. She was waiting on her steps, idly swinging her handbag back and forth between her knees. She was thinking, that much was obvious, about what, well... he could guess. He didn't want to startle her by leaning on the horn so he plucked his cell phone from the cradle at his hip and dialed her number.
The phone rang shrilly from her bag and her head jerked up, noticing him there. Stiffly, she got up from the cold stone step (and how cold it was, even though it was nearly seventy out) and shifted her body down the stairs and into his truck.
"Do you care where we go?" A little double meaning in there... sneaky. She didn't know if he meant it or not; of course he didn't mean it.
She shook her head a little belatedly and glanced out the window.
"Anything wrong?" he asked casually. He knew full well what the hell was wrong.
Sara shook her head again. "What would be wrong?"
Grissom took a right hand turn and screwed his face up in a sarcastic expression. "Back to bitter?"
Instead of biting his head off as she probably should she just smiled at him and glanced out the window. She felt claustrophobic inside of the car and counted the seconds until they got to the restaurant. But what with the way Grissom was driving towards the edge of town, the place might as well be in Utah. He showed no signs of stopping driving.
Somewhere, forty-five minutes on the outside of the city, Grissom pulled into a dirt and gravel parking lot, successfully thrusting Sara back to reality and away from her musings. A slight glance was sent her way before he plucked his key from the ignition and disappeared from the driver's seat.
Next thing she knew he was opening her door for her, extending his hand. She took it, but only out of... out of...
She took it because she wanted to take it. Because Sara wanted to hold his hand; she wanted him to hold her hand and never let go. As soon as her feet touched the pavement, their hands fell slack between their sides and Sara allowed Grissom to walk in front of her, in case he had any more notions about touching her.
He held the door for her and she passed by quickly, her low 'thanks' murmured through suddenly-dry lips.
The lunch crowd at the moderately-sized restaurant was large for such an out of the way place. So they sat on a bench near the entrance and waited to be seated. He glanced at her; she pretended not to notice.
Damn, she was really bad at pretending.
Just when she was about ready to chastise him for staring at her, a waitress appeared holding two thick, leather-bound menus. The robust older woman lead them to a table at the far side of the restaurant and once they were seated, placed the two menus down in front of them. Sara regarded hers as if it were a foreign object, possibly something about to alter her fate, but she flipped it open quickly as the woman took their drink orders and left.
Grissom rested his elbows gently on the table and glanced at her. She was staring at her menu, lost in thought. "I suppose this will only work if I start the conversation?" Sara's eyes snapped to his. "Are you alright? Tired?"
The genuine concern that had weaved its way into his voice struck a chord in her heart and continued to resonate dully in her ears for long moments after he had spoken. "Very, very tired. Of all this."
Grissom nodded as if he had a fraction of a clue what she was talking about. The thought struck her then that maybe he might. "What uh, what are you getting?" she asked, leaning over the table a bit to see what he had been pointing at on the menu.
"Oh I uh, was just thinking a panini..."
Sara blinked, twice. "What kind?" Thrilling conversation it wasn't, but it was something.
"Plain..."
"No meat?"
"No meat," he smiled. "I will be a vegetarian for you, at this point. I will eat salads for the rest of my time on this earth if you'd really just consider staying."
That made her smile. No, it made her grin. "I am considering it, that's why we're here, isn't it?"
Grissom leaned back in his seat and picked up his water glass, took a sip and then switched it to the other hand. "No, we're here so I can explain myself." Her face was blank as he continued. "You, Sara, are a woman of determination. If you wanted to leave, really wanted to go, you'd be gone." Her cheeks began to color in anger, but he attempted to assuage the onslaught of her speech. "I'm not saying it's because of me, I'm not that fickle. I'm simply saying that something is tying you here that's not going to be rectified by ten more days of conversation."
There was silence for a moment.
"It was silly of me to think fourteen days could make you change your mind about the world."
Sara huffed out a little puff of amazement at his voicing such a thing. And then they sat, they sat just looking at each other for what would have been a very long time had the waitress not ambled back over to take their orders. She told Daisy, (that was the waitress's name and Sara found it odd that she was the first person to be named that whom Sara had ever met) that she'd have a field greens salad. She doubted she'd eat any of it.
"Ever wonder how good we could have been?" She was laying it on thick, seeing if he would run. She never expected him to take the ball and run with her little fumble.
Grissom bit his lip and regarded her for a moment. "So you're just going to leave me with that?"
Sara bit her lip and hung her head, not in resignation, but in weariness. She didn't know what to say, didn't know what he could possibly say to make it better. But then he spoke.
"I dream this dream from time to time, I'm not sure if you want to hear it. I'm not sure if I want to tell it." Grissom chuckled, looking out into the vast expanse of restaurant, not daring to meet her eyes. "I'm face down in a ditch, maybe I'm dead, I don't know... but you're there and you turn me over, your gloves covered in mud... and you, you rip up a picture of the two of us right over me. And then you leave."
"I don't have a picture of the two of us," Sara reasoned, really just wanting to cry.
Grissom nodded. "Maybe we should do that. Take a picture." His posture relaxed. "Have something to remember the two of us by. Because when you're gone, if you leave, I don't think I'll remember."
Sara chocked out a sob. Fucking, fucking bastard. "You're not allowed to say that." Sara paused, punched her fist into the hard table, cracking her knuckles. "You're not allowed to say that."
"Is this what we're going to do? Talk in vague metaphors and skate around the problem?"
"You're not allowed to say that either!" Sara said, voice skipping. "I've always been forward about what I want, about who I want... you're the one speaking in quotes and, and fucking metaphors. It's never clear what you want."
Grissom smiled, a faint sad thing that pulled at her. "You're right. And I apologize." He finished off his glass of water. "I have been vague, but confronting this... isn't it a bit disconcerting?" he asked her, licking his lips. "Doesn't it scare you?"
"Of course it does, of course it does. Every damn day. I'm still willing to try." Her voice had lost the edge of desperation.
"I would-"
"These things aren't definite, and they don't fall apart as soon as there's a disagreement." She began to ramble. "And things aren't always wonderful, or great or even good but, don't you ever, just once want to feel what it's like to..." She couldn't bring herself to say it.
"To what, Sara?" he pressed, needing to hear her ask.
She swallowed audibly. "To feel what it's like to have me love you?" She chuckled to herself as she allowed her head to fall dejectedly into her hands. "I need to stop saying it, I need to stop."
"Aren't you afraid..." He considered his words. "That we'll climb that high, and when it comes time for the drop, all we do is... stay. What if we never fall?"
"I've already fallen."
"...so have I." He said it dejectedly, and still, she couldn't help laughing at him.
Their plates came and the overly-smiley waitress set them down before the two, feeling the palpable angst surrounding them. She didn't even bother to ask if they needed anything else, just skittered off, leaving them to their conversation once more.
Neither of them even bothered to glance at their food. They still stared at one another. There were things to say, there were sorry clichés to spit, truths to utter... but somehow lettuce and mozzarella seemed to have broken the spell that had held them together before.
The tomatoes on her plate begged at her with their red ripeness-focus on something else, but she just... just continued to hold his eyes. "Maybe we should eat," he muttered, not making a move towards his food.
"Maybe, yeah." she began, eyes to her plate and then to his plate, and then to his eyes. "Maybe…"
Her fork pierced the lettuce, head hung low, she began to eat her salad in earnest. It didn't even register on her stomach; it was only a distraction. Across the table, she heard Grissom fidgeting with his sandwich and then... nothing.
Sara glanced up, from underneath her eyelids. "Wha?"
"Did you mean that? You want to love me?" Something deep down at the very bottom of the gravelly pitch of his voice, something wavered. It was the tone of voice people used when saying something that was simply utterly too good to be true.
"Yes," she answered immediately.
Grissom's eyes flared a bit and he nodded slowly. "Then," he placed the half of sandwich back down on the plate. "I suppose it's only fair for me to tell you that I'd very much like to learn how to love you."